In recent years, medical-science has come to the realization that much—some say as much as 80% or even more—of our physical sickness and disease is psychosomatic or psychogenic—that is, mental in origin. What a tremendous realization! Now it is possible to go deeper, to the cause of the problems, instead of dealing merely with their manifestations. This doesn’t mean it will be easy, of course, because it requires, first and foremost, honesty, courage, and willingness to ‘look within’.

     For thousands of years, Buddhism has taught much the same thing: that Mind is the culprit behind the vast bulk of our suffering. We complain about and blame others for things which happen to us that we don’t like, instead of examining them objectively and maybe discovering thereby that very often, we are suffering from our own limited way of looking at things; how often, for example, do we imagine slights and insults where none was intended, or become filled with worry and fear about what will happen if …… ? Our propensity to do wrong, even though we know it to be wrong, is another example of this; nobody makes us do wrong but ourselves. This causes us anguish and disease, and we do it to ourselves.

If you do not like

to suffer,

you should know

that much of our

suffering is

self-caused,

and can be avoided

if we wake up.